RJ02-Reflective Journal Entry 3- Formative Assessment - Due Saturday, March 5,2011
Develop a activity that you can use to provide formative feedback. Describe this activity, upload it, and link it to this entry.
Describe the concept that is difficult to learn or the misconception that this activity addresses.
Provide a link in your description to the appropriate GSE.
Explain how your activity allows you to assess your students' understanding, as well as the feedback that you will provide to help them correct their thinking.
I decided to use inquiry for my first lesson introducing mechanical waves. This unit is good because there are a lot of readily available tools you can use to model the motions of these waves. Knowing so, I first explained what a model was which most students had an idea of what one was. After that, students were broken up into groups and given a slinky, a tuning fork, and a bucket of water with ping pong balls. Their job was next to determine whether or not we could use these common objects as models for mechanical waves based on their prior knowledge. Students tried a variety of things, quickly determining that they could model mechanical waves. Some of the students had learned about waves in middle school, although most didn't. Those students seemed to be evenly distributed throughout the classroom and contributed their ideas to the rest of the group. Students were then asked to try to actually model a mechanical wave with the tools they had, and they were going to present one of their examples to the class.
Many students quickly knew that the tuning fork made sound waves, but as I walked around I asked students what they thought caused the sound that they heard. They believed that the vibration of the fork caused the sound, but didn't know that this vibration needed to travel through a medium (air) to make the sound. Without any instruction to do so, the students then rang the tuning fork, and placed it into the water with the ping pong balls. This obviously changed the medium from air to water, and they could visibly see a wave occur in the water as well as splash. The concept of these waves traveling through a medium is difficult for these students because although they realize the wave moves something, they believe it's the actual wave that is doing without a medium.
This is good for my assessments of the students prior knowledge because although they all came from the same middle school, with a variety of teachers that teach things different ways there could be gaps in their knowledge of this subject. I was surprised to see that more than three quarters of the class hadn't even covered mechanical waves in middle school. As their trying different things, I can help my higher level students by asking them thought provoking questions such as "do you think there would be different components of this wave or is it all the same" or "what would happen if we created a wave using this". Things like this stimulate their minds and their very eager and intuitive to try new things as I learned in the electromagnet lab we did at the end of last unit. With just a brief section on exploration, students quickly finished the lab to have extra time to play with the battery, electromagnet, and lights to determine what would happen in different situations. I was very happy with their conclusions, as they even learned some electricity concepts while doing it.
I would definitely do something similar in the future to introduce a topic, because it gives me as the teacher a good chance to assess where the students knowledge is coming into the topic, along highlighting any misconceptions they may have had before we begin learning new material in the unit.
RJ02-Reflective Journal Entry 3- Formative Assessment - Due Saturday, March 5,2011
I decided to use inquiry for my first lesson introducing mechanical waves. This unit is good because there are a lot of readily available tools you can use to model the motions of these waves. Knowing so, I first explained what a model was which most students had an idea of what one was. After that, students were broken up into groups and given a slinky, a tuning fork, and a bucket of water with ping pong balls. Their job was next to determine whether or not we could use these common objects as models for mechanical waves based on their prior knowledge. Students tried a variety of things, quickly determining that they could model mechanical waves. Some of the students had learned about waves in middle school, although most didn't. Those students seemed to be evenly distributed throughout the classroom and contributed their ideas to the rest of the group. Students were then asked to try to actually model a mechanical wave with the tools they had, and they were going to present one of their examples to the class.
Many students quickly knew that the tuning fork made sound waves, but as I walked around I asked students what they thought caused the sound that they heard. They believed that the vibration of the fork caused the sound, but didn't know that this vibration needed to travel through a medium (air) to make the sound. Without any instruction to do so, the students then rang the tuning fork, and placed it into the water with the ping pong balls. This obviously changed the medium from air to water, and they could visibly see a wave occur in the water as well as splash. The concept of these waves traveling through a medium is difficult for these students because although they realize the wave moves something, they believe it's the actual wave that is doing without a medium.
This is good for my assessments of the students prior knowledge because although they all came from the same middle school, with a variety of teachers that teach things different ways there could be gaps in their knowledge of this subject. I was surprised to see that more than three quarters of the class hadn't even covered mechanical waves in middle school. As their trying different things, I can help my higher level students by asking them thought provoking questions such as "do you think there would be different components of this wave or is it all the same" or "what would happen if we created a wave using this". Things like this stimulate their minds and their very eager and intuitive to try new things as I learned in the electromagnet lab we did at the end of last unit. With just a brief section on exploration, students quickly finished the lab to have extra time to play with the battery, electromagnet, and lights to determine what would happen in different situations. I was very happy with their conclusions, as they even learned some electricity concepts while doing it.
I would definitely do something similar in the future to introduce a topic, because it gives me as the teacher a good chance to assess where the students knowledge is coming into the topic, along highlighting any misconceptions they may have had before we begin learning new material in the unit.